Community development and environmentalism : the dilemmas of being a good ecological citizen

This paper explores some of the dilemmas in operating as both a good community development practitioner and a good ecological citizen. It begins with a brief casestudy of an experience of community development engagement with nongovernment organisations (NGOs) concerned about illegal logging in a South East Asian country. This is followed by a discussion of the different ways of understanding and evaluating the threats to the natural environment today and the various strategies that might be invoked. The paper then considers why operating as a 'good ecological citizen' can be a challenging task for community development practitioners and it discusses some ways forward.

The phenomenology of being-meditative

This thesis addresses the experience of being-meditative using a philosophical perspective. It discloses the ontological dynamics of meditative-Dasein and reveals the meditative modes of being-at-rest, a cultural and social mode of being, whose perceptual intentionality is unified by the authentic Care for Being, thereby enabling a Homecoming.

The personal meaning of being a diabetes nurse educator

This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of four diabetes nurse educators, as they describe their roles and focus on what it is like to be a diabetes nurse educator, from their unique perspectives.

'Unnatural', 'Unwomanly', 'Uncreditable' and 'Undervalued': the significance of being a childless woman in Australian society

Childlessness is an increasing trend, internationally and in Australia. The few studies exploring the lived experiences of childless women have been conducted in America, Canada and the United Kingdom; predominantly during the 1980s and 1990s. The experiences of childless women in contemporary Australia remain under-researched. This hermeneutic phenomenological study sought to enhance understanding of the lived experience of being a childless woman in contemporary Australia. In-depth interviews with five childless women revealed five key themes as significant facets of the experiences of childless women: notions of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’; woman = mother; childlessness as a discrediting attribute; feeling undervalued; and the significance of being childless. By privileging the experiences of childless women in a pronatalist society, it is apparent that misconceptions and stereotypes about childlessness continue to pervade. This study contributes to understanding this growing population group; highlighting that while childlessness is increasingly acknowledged, it is still not completely understood.

Writing as capitulation : the shelter of being-responsible

This paper explores the notion of writing and its relationship to an always-existing responsibility. It asks the question of whether writing might necessarily be a kind of biographical undertaking, and then drawing on Heidegger, it inquires into how writing might provoke an ontological encounter for the writer. Via a close investigation of the definitions and etymologies of the word ‘capitulate’, the paper links the concepts of Derridean violence, Hellerian freedom and (post)modernity, non-infinite temporality and assumptions of a metaphysics of presence to a practice of reading/writing. By taking up the Heideggerian concept of Being’s as ex-istence and porosity, it attempts to argue that post-modernity, in coming to terms with the consequences of freedom, offers the subject the opportunity for an ontological encounter with responsibility, and subsequently how an acknowledgement of this thrownness might function in itself as a kind of shelter, albeit an open one.

Activating teacher critical moments of learning through reflection

Mathematical modelling is one of the current focuses in the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum Framework. A multi-tiered teaching experiment using design research methodology was conducted to build teachers’ capacity in designing, facilitating, and evaluating learning during mathematical modelling tasks for Primary 5 students (aged 10-11). This paper illustrates the use of the retrospective analysis phase within design research cycles to activate a critical moment of teacher learning involving the interplay between questioning and listening during her first attempt at facilitating a mathematical modelling task. The teacher affirmed her deliberate focuses in the use of questions to (a) refine students’ models, (b) encourage articulation of student ideas in self-evaluation of the models, and (c) clarify and understand student reasoning. However, she also discovered the importance of interpretative listening in conjunction with questioning to promote more sophisticated mathematisation processes in model development. Implications from the use of the retrospective analysis phase on activating critical moments of learning during teacher education will be discussed.

'To be or not ...' Lacan and the meaning of being in Shakepeare's Hamlet

This chapter provides a reading of Lacan's important reading of Shakespeare's Hamlet in Seminar VI, in the context of his developing thought on the neuroses, and obsessional neurosis in particular.  The article draws atttention to the way Lacan's focus shifts from Hamlet's 'Oedipal' relation towards his uncle towards his inability to fathom teh desire of his mother, Gertrude.  This interpretive optic opens up many scenes of the play, and strange transformations in the heor's conduct: his terrible hostility to Ophelia, and his 'rebound' at the moment that he leaps into her open grave, able at last to say 'It is I, Hamlet the Dane!" and undertake to do the task his father's ghost had implored of him.